Linux Text Editors:

Linux has a plethora of text editors available for simple text, structured text (eg. XML, HTML) and programming languages.
The most popular are listed below and almost all are available for a multitude of other operating systems.

Linux editors for plain text can be divided into two categories, graphical GUI editors and console text editors. The advantage of the GUI editor is intuitive user friendly interface while the benefit of the console text editor is the suitability over long distance network connections which may or may not provide suitable bandwidth or reliability which would both be required by the GUI editors for remote operation.

Console Based Editors:

Screenshot

Description

emacs: This console based plain text editor supports the theory that more is better. It tries to support every feature possible.Also see the YoLinux.com emacs/xemacs tutorial.

jed: This console based plain text editor supports menus and other GUI features in a console based terminal. Targeted to software development. Text based but with some GUI menu features (accessible via esc+M). Feature rich including a unicode mode.Ubuntu Install: sudo apt-get install jed

vim: This console based plain text editor supports syntax highlighting and numerous plug-ins for specialized configurations and features. This editor is ubiquitous and available on all Linux systems and is the "standard" Linux editor. While it is not intuitive and has a learning curve, it is worth learning if Linux is part of your career or future.Also see the YoLinux.com vim tutorial.

gvim: This an attempt to provide a GUI editor based on the vim console editor. While it provides many of the features offered by a GUI text editor, it will still require knowledge of vim to stay out of trouble.